Tag: MOOC

不要緊，你怎麼去慢慢地，只要你不停止。 (It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop. – Confucius)

Remember, the only student at Unseen University anybody remembers and likes is Rincewind. And you know what? He failed his exams. Rincewind is a wizard with no skill, no wizardly qualifications.

What do you think of that?

Dear student,

Now is the big moment.
As a new open learning or Mooc student you will need these:
Gumption & perseverance
Because the start will be disappointing and the fellow students will not seem very helpful (you need to know and consider they are also new to the course). You need passion and commitment. Remember in dark and depressing moments why the course is funny and why you want to learn. Write a blogpost about your passion and commitment and gumption and perseverance to remember in hard times.

Surprise us with your skills and knowledge, your jokes and music and poems.Knowledge and skills of social media. The internet is loaded with courses and help pages about almost anything. You could help fellow students improve their skills.Know the facts. write down the course URLs and hashtags, know the places and times. Put the facts in a blogpost to remember them.Asking Questions. Ask questions. If you do not ask questions you will fail.Be your own master and teacher. Open learning is for grown-ups, for independent humans. If you are in doubt, start and try, this will be a new learning theme for you in this course. Write and publish something about that.Connect to fellow students, retweet; use hashtags; answer tweets even from students you do not know. You know that a comment on your blog or an answer on twitter or facebook is a pleasure and a reward, be generous with comments and answers. You are not alone and you do really need these fellow students. And do connect to people outside the course, make them join. Discuss the course with people around you.Publish. Blog and reblog, write comment on blogs. Leave your web address on blogs. Publish your blogpost on twitter or facebook or any other platform. Because learning is connecting.

Birds are used in poetical metaphors about independency and freedom. But as the world is rhizomatic and ecological, and as anything is rhizomatically connected to everything, nothing, no bird, no student is ever independent.
Does this mean independent is a useless word, because it is a non-existent concept?
Or is independence a “relation word”, a word which always has to be used in a description of a relation?
“She is very independent of her parents.”
“He is dependent of drugs.”
“Our objective is to foster

Write a blog post on social aspects of mooc.
In Wikipedia is a nice short description of Belbins group roles:

Plant: A creative, imaginative, unorthodox team-member who solves difficult problems. Although they sometimes situate themselves far from the other team members, they always come back to present their brilliant idea.Resource Investigator: The “Resource Investigator” is the networker for the group. Whatever the team needs, the Resource Investigator is likely to have someone in their address book who can either provide it or know someone else who can provide it. Being highly driven to make connections with people, Explores opportunities, make contacts, shares external information
The “Chairman/Co-ordinator” ensures that all members of the team are able to contribute to discussions and decisions of the team. Their concern is for fairness and equity among team members. Clarifies goals; helps allocate roles, responsibilities, and duties; articulates group conclusionsShaper: A dynamic team-member who loves a challenge and thrives on pressure. . Seeks patterns in group work; pushes group toward agreement and decisions; challenges othersMonitor-Evaluator: A sober, strategic and discerning member, who tries to see all options and judge accurately. This member contributes a measured and dispassionate analysis and, through objectivity, stops the team committing itself to a misguided task. Analyzes problems and complex issues; monitors progress and prevents mistakes; assesses the contributions of others; sees all options; judges accurately
The “Team Worker” is concerned to ensure that interpersonal relationships within the team are maintained. They are sensitive to atmospheres and may be the first to approach another team member who feels slighted, excluded or otherwise attacked but has not expressed their discomfort. Gives personal support and help to others; socially oriented and sensitive to others;
The “Implementer” is the practical thinker who can create systems and processes that will produce what the team wants. Taking a problem and working out how it can be practically addressed is their strength.
The “Completer Finisher” is the detail person within the team. They have a great eye for spotting flaws and gaps and for knowing exactly where the team is in relation to its schedule.Specialistwho brings ‘specialist’ knowledge to the team. Single-minded, self-starting, dedicated; provides unique or rare expertise and skills.
More and different group roles do exist.
Group roles are not an analytical instrument, but a management or training aid.
More than one group (team) roles can be found in one human.
We could label some roles as task-roles, some are process-roles, some are people-roles, etc.
In a healthy group most roles are present.

The participants of a mooc are they a group? or just a loose sample of individuals?
Is it possible to recognize group roles in a mooc, when a mooc is not a group? If the participants of a mooc are (part of) rhizome, group roles are life functions of the rhizome?

Does a healty cMOOC need ‘group roles’?

Social psychology predicts some phases in the development of a group. (for short overview: Wikipedia)

20th century French Philosophers are so out (in Europe). Even if one reads their books in French, much of it is incomprehensible for most people. Did they write unreadable books on purpose? Deleuze “invented” the rhizome in about 1976. (In an article, now Introduction in Deleuze and Guattari Mille plateaux). In 2005 Patrick Odiard wrote a piece of music “Rhizome”

This is a blogpost on the new MOOC on Rhizomatic learning started by Dave Cormier, start January 14.

As a model for culture, the rhizome resists the organizational structure of the root-tree system which charts causality along chronological lines and looks for the originary source of “things” and looks towards the pinnacle or conclusion of those “things.” “A rhizome, on the other hand, “ceaselessly established connections between semiotic chains, organizations of power, and circumstances relative to the arts, sciences, and social struggles” (Deleuze and Guattari, 7). Rather than narrativize history and culture, the rhizome presents history and culture as a map or wide array of attractions and influences with no specific origin or genesis, for a “rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo” (D&G 25). The planar movement of the rhizome resists chronology and organization, instead favoring a nomadic system of growth and propagation.

In this model, culture spreads like the surface of a body of water, spreading towards available spaces or trickling downwards towards new spaces through fissures and gaps, eroding what is in its way. The surface can be interrupted and moved, but these disturbances leave no trace, as the water is charged with pressure and potential to always seek its equilibrium, and thereby establish smooth space. [rhizomes.net]
[D&G: Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia . trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, 1987.]

Did you know rhizome.org? the Rhizome ArtBase is an online archive of new media art containing some 2174 art works, and growing.

M is for massive and for MOOC. M is a very misunderstood word in the MOOC acronym.
In some courses M is just for bulk, or just means very much students are involved. But massive has another connotation, that is of a solid construction or solid big thing.
This second meaning of massive (geologists use massif for this connotation of massive) is what M of MOOC stands for.

Metal is solid and massive, because of the forces of the connected molecules. A massive tower is solid and massive because of its structure and connectedness of the stones. These connected molecules are a good metaphor for the massiveness of a MOOC. Like in metal the connections between molecules are cause of solidity and massiveness in a real MOOC the connections between ideas opinions and participants are important features of the MOOC.

The image is of layers of different metals in a nano-electronic device. It is a beautiful metaphor that the just the different metals in this device do make the device work. In a MOOC it is the connections between different participants and different opinions that make a MOOC a source of learning. That is why massive is important in a MOOC. In a MOOC a lot of different participants and different opinions and different participants make a better interconnected network.

I did make a presntation of the video in Libreoffice presentation app. Upload the file to Slideshare. Voice was recorded in Audacity and uploaded to Slideshare as a mp3 file. In Slideshare sync voice and dia’s. I did use some parts of the video of Neal Gillis, Neal did make the video in “What is a MOOC?”

I want to translate into Dutch the famous youtube video of Dave Cormier (and other people) “What is a mooc?” . At first a transcript of the spoken text translated in Dutch:

Open and Connected. Presentation about Life in the Open, 21 Century Teaching & Learning.

Should we go on with this Open thing of today? Is technology becoming more important than communication?

Connectedness and openness are important. In Bloom you will not find openness and connectedness, because in Bloom you will not find anybody else than a non-person with cognitive skills. In the taxonomy of Romiszowski you could find congnitive skills, but also psychomotor skills, reactive skills, and interactive skills. (Book on Romiszowski: Romiszowski, A (1999) The Development of Physical Skills: Instruction in the Psychomotor Domain, Chapter 19, Instructional Design Theories and Models: A New Paradigm of Instructional Theory, Volume II, C. M. Reigeluth, Mahwah, NJ, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Some notes on chapter one, Teaching Online:
Quote: The online environment is so different from what most instructors have encountered before.
Question: why ‘virtual classrooms’ ? Your students could communicate without a virtual classroom.
Question: Is the chapter for school teachers, or for all different kind of teachers (working in HRM or companies and businesses.
Is the ‘class ‘ important for online learning? A steady group of participants all working the same speed and same curriculum?
Quote: As an online instructor you need to step back a bit from the spotlight in order to allow the students to take a more active part.
page 16: “instructors who are not based on a campus have even fewer resources to help them troubleshoot problems” . Comment: Campus is so small, mostly my help comes from the internet, forums, websites, people I know sending mail. Being based on a campus is preventing these teachers from using the full power of internet and web, networking does not stop at the gates of campus. Teaching online would be better off with a small group of teachers working together.
Page 21: with online education cross-cultural and international collaborations became possible without expense of travel.
Quote: On the internet nobody knows you are a dog.

I did the beginners questionnaire and my total points is 10. I do like an active part of participants in teaching. (I prefer the word participant above student because of this preference of mine.)